The aviation community has a goal of reducing the fatal-accident rate by eighty percent within the next ten years. At the same time, air traffic continues to increase, and the national airspace system is undergoing major changes. In particular, it is likely that aircraft pilots will be given more responsibility for avoiding hazards themselves.
Weather is a factor in a third of aircraft accidents. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is presently embarked upon a multi-year effort to provide better weather information and to improve hazard characterization, condition monitoring, data display, and decision support. At the present time, controllers, dispatchers, and air-traffic managers have access to a number of weather-information products from private vendors and from government services. Graphic displays of weather information on large airliners arc limited to onboard weather radars and information from paper weather briefings. En-route updates are delivered either as voice messages via radio or as alphanumeric data-link printouts onboard the aircraft.
Flight planning is a complex task. A strategic planning and replanning tool produces a flight plan that describes the track, speed, and altitude that an aircraft will fly during various phases of an entire flight. Because the underlying models and assumptions made in a completely automated system may be incomplete or fallible, some have suggested the broad concept of a cooperative planner that interacts with a human operator. Pilots and dispatchers alike have stated that merely providing additional hazard information would not adequately support effective decision-making for routing choices. A need therefore remains for more advanced facilities for generating and modifying route plans for aircraft, both for increased safety and for better ease of use.